The room was cozy and well designed for her purposes. She showered and checked her email. The wall of books and the strange light in the wardrobes below called to her, but first, she needed sustenance. She couldn’t remember when she’d eaten anything except Fee’s biscuits.
With that thought of Fee and the little café, Hannah stepped out just as the morning sun sent its first rays beneath the boardwalk roof.
The café was packed. She hesitated, especially after heads turned to stare at her entrance. She almost backed out until Fee gestured at her with a coffee mug. Petite, with short-cropped brown hair and the small chin of an elf or fairy, the cook pointed at a booth toward the far end of the room.
A beringed hand waved—Amber. Relieved, Hannah smiled at a few familiar faces from yesterday and slid into a booth across from the tarot reader and Teddy, the jeweler.
“Sam’s helping Mariah with the baby. As the police chief’s wife, she’s our best news source,” Teddy immediately announced. “So now you have to be our substitute. Kurt said you were at the lodge last night. He’s too shocked to talk about it. What did you see?”
Carmel’s son, Kurt Kennedy, was Teddy’s husband, Hannah recalled. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, although from the excited hum around the café, she thought not too many were grieving.
“Carmel has been lost to her sons for decades.” Teddy lifted her coffee cup and grimaced. “She was their mother. Kurt and Monty respected that, and that she’d saved their inheritance from the debacle their father left. But apparently she did so at the cost of her soul. I think they would rather have been poor and had a human mother.”
“Carmel was an emotional vampire,” Amber explained as Fee brought over a menu.
“She smelled of rot,” the petite cook agreed sadly. “She was ill, but no one should have to die like that. Tea, coffee, or juice?”
“Tea, please, and if you have a juice smoothie, that’s enough for me.” Hannah scanned the menu but didn’t see smoothies on it, although the machines were right behind them.
“You could use mango,” Fee decided for her, removing the menu. “The machines are Monty’s idea. I’d rather bake. But I’m learning to appreciate the nutritional value of mush.”
She departed, filling coffee cups along the way.
Hannah turned back to Amber. “An emotional vampire draws from those around her.” She tried not to sound like a teacher, but providing information was her purpose in life. “Did she harm her sons? Others?”
“Yes,” Teddy said flatly. “She drained the entire town lifeless until Cass dragged Samantha back here to nourish us. Things have been picking up ever since. It’s a kind of synergy, I think. We’re all building and creating and supporting each other, filling the empty well, diminishing Carmel’s power. It’s even better now that we’ve drawn Kurt and Monty away from the polluted lodge.”
“Was Carmel the cause of the pollution?” Hannah asked, trying to understand her new home.
“You get it! You’ll fit right in here,” Amber crowed in delight. “I need to read your cards. Come over later and we’ll see how your arrival relates to the witch’s death.”
Humming the tune to ding dong, the witch is dead, Amber took the sack of food a waitress handed her. “Thanks, Sally. I need to feed the hungry before they eat the TV. Sally will be our new elementary teacher.”
Young, round-faced, and smiling, Sally nodded a greeting and flitted away to help another customer.
Hannah remembered—Amber’s new husband was paying for the new school, and Amber’s nephew was to be Hannah’s lone middle-school student. She needed to learn all she could and not say too much about herself. “I thought Lucys are the witches, and the Kennedys are Nulls.”
“Define witch, and then sort white magic from black.” Amber squeezed out of the booth, stopping to chat with other customers as she worked her way through the crowd.
“We really don’t do magic, and Amber doesn’t read futures,” Teddy warned. “She’s psychic to a degree, but she needs cards or powerful emotion to focus. If you have secrets, avoid Amber. We never knew how dangerous she was until she collapsed a couple of corrupt Hollywood film studios.”
Duly warned. “Says the empath who kills ghosts,” Hannah said dryly. “I’m not sure secrets are possible in this town. Keegan has obligingly written down everything he’s learned so I can record it for the library.”
“But Keegan is a man and a scientist and accepts nothing unless it’s proven. He didn’t tell you that Carmel was an emotional vampire, did he?”
“He mentioned evil crystals, because he’s experimented with those he found here. But I thought evil was in the crystal paint used in the commune. Carmel didn’t strike me as artistic.” Hannah sipped her tea. Fragrant and delicious—she took a moment to savor it. Fee had known exactly which blend she preferred.
Across the table, Teddy shrugged. “The commune was a huge deal back in the day. Everyone visited—musicians, politicians, rich college kids by the droves. I think that’s how Carmel met her husband. Her brother is an artist and lived there a while. But we have no way of knowing if crystals affected her.”
“It stands to reason that if Kennedy Senior was polluted with greed, Carmel would be eventually,” Hannah said. Having spent a lifetime absorbing ancient Malcolm journals, she had no problem discussing arcane philosophies like evil. “We just don’t know how or why they were infected. It could have been their nature, the crystals, or the land itself. Or all of the above.”
Harvey slid into the empty seat beside Teddy. The lean, long-haired musician wore a guitar case over his back, a dark beard stubble, and carried a carved walking stick.
He handed the stick to Hannah. “There’s no question who you are. I had it ready before you arrived. I just needed to choose the stones after we met.”
Polished cherry, the stick felt light and soothing against her palm. “Nice, thank you! This is marvelous work.” Hannah studied the handle—a vengeful angel with agate eyes. Most of the sticks she’d noticed had Harvey’s idea of protectors on them—dragons and lions and so forth.
“You found the stones in Hillvale?” She admired the way they flashed in the sunlight through the window.
“Part of my grandfather’s collection. Keegan can probably tell you their origin. He’s already paid for it. We wanted to welcome the new teacher a little more pleasantly than last night.”
Harvey was one of the most attractive men she’d ever met, with soulful dark eyes and cheekbones to die for. Hannah wanted to learn more, but he slid from the booth almost as quickly as he’d arrived.
“Teach well,” he said with a half smile, before slipping through the crowd and out again.
“He’s what the old folks would call elven, isn’t he?” Hannah asked in amusement.
“Maybe in Scotland. Here, he’s just an itinerant busker and some relation to the family who owns the mountain above the lodge. He’s also a concert pianist but he’s ruining his hands carving those sticks.”
Hannah ran her palms over the polished stick. “Or he’s soaking the wood with his music and storing it there. He doesn’t belong in concert halls, does he?”
Teddy rubbed the head of her own staff. “No. As you say, he’s like a forest creature, shy of people until he knows them. Or perhaps I should say, distrustful. Harvey isn’t exactly shy.”
“Elven,” Hannah repeated, accepting the smoothie she was handed. “Fiercely guarding his homeland, I suspect. Is there any way Carmel could have threatened him or the land. . . ?” She raised a querying eyebrow.
Teddy shook her auburn curls. “Nope. Not believing any Lucy has the capacity to kill. Kurt and Monty are Nulls and have more reason than most to want Carmel dead—she was draining the company resources and hampering progress. But I sense no violence in them either.”
“So the suspects are everyone in the lodge except the people who knew her best?” Hannah sipped the perfect mango smoothie and regarded her new acquaintance innocently.
Teddy shook her head again and slid from the booth. “Nope. Not playing that game. For all I know, the devil came to claim his own.”
Well, yeah, there was always that, Hannah supposed. If Hillvale could have ghosts and elves and psychics, why not the devil himself?
And speak of the devil. . . She should get back to Aaron’s shop before he came in. That faint translucence in between those wardrobes drew her imagination like iron to lodestone. He was the last known person to own the painting of the moonstone. Outside the comfort zone of her library, did she have the courage to explore?
Six
Accompanied by Xavier, the rental agent who knew all the available properties in Hillvale, Aaron unlocked his shop door early, determined to move the schoolteacher out. He thought he might be a little irrational on the subject. No Lucy had ever paid attention to his inventory. He had no reason to believe Hannah would notice, but he relied on instinct as much as his psychometry. Hannah Simon was a danger to his peace of mind.
Opening the door, he sensed wrongness and instantly hit the overhead light switch, filling the shop with light and shadows.
The wardrobes were stored on the far end of the shop—near the stairs. He could see the tops of them from the door, but not the area where the painting was stored. He had hoped the good vibrations on the two wardrobes would neutralize the painting, but he should have shoved the damned thing behind the wardrobes. Unfortunately, it took two people to move them, and he didn’t want to explain why.
Now he was not only irrational but obsessively focused on the painting. He tried to be sensible, but he took the shortest path through the clutter, leaving Xavier behind.
The schoolteacher lay crumpled in the small space in front of the wardrobes, her arm stretched to reach between them. She’d shoved a Victorian settee out of the way to clear the opening.
“Call Brenda,” he shouted at Xavier, while dropping to his knees to check her pulse. Two women in two days. . . the sheriff would have good reason to lock him up if this one was dead too.
He had to jumpstart his heart after he found her strong pulse.
Too damned many people had died on his watch—and too often they had connections to this infernal scrap of canvas. He had good reason for his paranoia.
Releasing her wrist, he tugged at the teacher’s arm, pulling her hand off the damned painting. He ought to just burn the thing, but he couldn’t help sensing the artist’s urgency in wanting to pass on valuable information. He’d just never seen anything in the oil to be acted on.
With the removal of the painting from her touch, Hannah’s eyelids fluttered—but closed again as soon as he touched her. He yanked his hand away.
What the damned hell had caused the teacher to hunt down the one piece he didn’t display?
Satisfied that she was alive, he sat back on his heels to see if she’d moved anything else around.
She moaned and stirred again. Holding her hand to her head, she tried to sit up. Aaron didn’t dare touch her again. He seemed to fry her neurons every time he tried. That should teach him to keep his hands off.
“We have a nurse coming. You should lie down or the next time you fall, you’re likely to crack your head. It’s a wonder you didn’t this time.” He knew he sounded cold. He couldn’t help it. She’d terrified him in ways he didn’t want to explore ever again.
“A nurse can’t help me. Don’t waste her time.” Color slowly returned to her cheeks as she sat up. She leaned against one of the wardrobes, not looking at him.
This morning she’d dressed in khaki shorts and a bright red t-shirt, nothing clingy but enough to reveal slender curves. He topped six feet, and her head came to his shoulder, so she might be slim, but she wasn’t petite. She still seemed frail.
“You always have fits and collapse without reason?” he asked sarcastically.
“With reason, but that’s none of your business.” She shifted enough to peer between the wardrobes where he’d shoved the painting. “That thing is almost luminous. What is it?”
“Luminous?” That startled him out of his frustration enough to avoid the actual question. “The wardrobes are works of art, but they’re hardly luminous.”
After finishing his phone calls, Xavier weaved his way around crystal chandeliers and rusted armor. A skeleton of a man with receding gray hair that he’d recently taken to having styled, Xavier dressed vaguely like the lawyer he’d once been. In the heat, he’d discarded his usual suit coat and wore a pressed short-sleeve shirt with collar and tie. “Brenda’s on her way from the café.”
“I’ll pay for the breakfast she’s probably missing, but don’t call her again, please.” The teacher started to reach between the wardrobes.
Aaron grabbed her arm to stop her. She started to topple. “Stultissime,” he growled and released her.
She bobbed up again like a damned jack-in-the-box.
“I’m hoping I remember enough Latin to believe that was directed at yourself,” Xavier said sternly, stepping between the damned intrusive schoolteacher and the apparently luminous painting hidden between the wardrobes.
“Total idiot, masculine, singular,” the teacher translated Aaron’s curse, rubbing her arm where he’d touched her. “But unless you knew I was susceptible to your touch, I don’t believe you’re a total idiot. So far, no one can explain what sets me off, not even the most learned men of science or any ancestor in any journal in any of the libraries I’ve searched.”
“But they have theories, don’t they?” he asked harshly, knowing from just brief touches that she hid secrets.
“As do we all. Now please explain that luminous painting. I believe I passed out when I touched it.” She inched away from him and the wardrobe but gazed steadily between the two towering pieces.
Xavier reached in before Aaron could stop him and tilted the frame so he could yank it out.
They all studied the ugly oil of red and blue blotches framed in cheap black-painted pine.
“Not that thing,” she said, reaching for the frame, then drawing back as if it were a hot poker. “I’m afraid to touch it. What’s behind the ugly canvas?”
Aaron grabbed the frame, opened a wardrobe, and heaved the oil on the top shelf. “If it causes you harm just by touching the frame, then it’s nothing you want to see.”
In relief, he watched sturdy, no-nonsense Brenda enter. The nurse practitioner was somewhere in her forties, he guessed, and already dying her hair to an unnatural red. But she was good at what she did.
He left Brenda to argue with her recalcitrant patient while he stepped away, out of range of the damned painting he hadn’t wanted to touch and the woman he shouldn’t touch.
“You see why I need to move her out of here?” he asked in a low voice.
Xavier shrugged. “Won’t be easy. Monty and Fee have claimed the old Adams’ place, so I’ve quit booking it, but it still won’t be empty for a month. Most everything else is rented until Christmas.”
A month, crap, but even a month was better than forever. “Then can she use the cabin Monty’s living in now? It’s not too far out of town.”
“They’re building an RV park next to it for the workmen on the new development. You really want your teacher living down there in the mud with the contractors and their crew? Take her and Kurt over to the old drugstore, see if the upstairs can be divided off. I told Kurt that’s the best place for a schoolroom.”
The old drugstore was near city hall and right across the street from him. Hillvale was small. Aaron supposed he couldn’t hope for better than that.
Done with checking her patient, Brenda stood and dusted off her jeans. “Nothing wrong with her that a little nourishment wouldn’t help. She’s probably just allergic to you, Aaron.”
With that cryptic comment, the nurse headed for the door.
Allergic to Aaron? Hannah decided that didn’t even begin to make sense. She fainted when he touched her because she was allergic? That’s not how allergies worked.
After
she’d had time to recover from her embarrassing ineptitude at spying, Xavier returned with his boss to show her across the street to the building they hoped might house the school.
Leaving the men to talk with each other, Hannah crossed the rough wooden floors of the old drugstore attic, her sandals clapping noisily. The place needed carpet. With slanted ceilings, it really couldn’t be called a second story. She could feel the heat pouring in through the roof—only a sheet of plasterboard and a few boards away. Insulation apparently hadn’t been invented when the place was built.
It was probably best to take a place of her own. She might not be accustomed to heat, but she had lived in worse places. Besides, the lodge was too expensive, if not just creepy.
“There’s enough space for a schoolroom and a studio apartment,” she acknowledged. “The back half is already walled off, as is the bathroom. That leaves a front area large enough for several students and desks.”
“You shouldn’t have to share a bathroom with your students.” Kurt Kennedy, architect and owner, frowned as he studied the layout. “We could add extensions to the piping and create a second bathroom without a shower for the students. I’m just not certain how long we’ll be using the place. The permits for the new development are starting to line up, and the utilities up there are almost in. We can start building a real school before long.”
“You can rent this place out then,” Aaron pointed out. “En suite master bedroom and powder room.”
Allergies or not, Hannah stayed on the opposite side of the room from the antique dealer. The damned man exuded too much assurance and more pheromones than she could handle.
And he was hiding that painting from her. What if it was the one she needed?
“I hate to mention this, but most schools would not allow a single teacher and student alone, unsupervised. It’s a liability issue. Maybe we should just look at dividing the downstairs into two schoolrooms.” Hannah started for the stairs. She didn’t much care where she lived. Her only goal right now was a good look at that painting.
Moonstone Shadows Page 5